Graham
was away with the Scottish team who have a Norma CN car to Estoril for
the last round of the 2017 V de V season. He was intending going to
Silverstone that weekend for the Walter Hayes Trophy but after attending
the Formula Ford Festival at Brands It seems he lost a bit of interest
in FF1600. Not really sure why this came about because Rotor have
always loved Formula Ford. In fact the team spent 3 months recently on a
programme to see if a new FF1600 car was a possibility. Kenneth even
did some simulations that proved that we were on the right track.
Everything looked good until we got to the Roll Over Protection System.
This has always been a problem for us due to no one following the
material rules and guidelines as laid out in the Motor Sport
Associations rule book. Instead people go the certificate route but this
involves money and lots of it. There is one test house to check your
simulations and their fees and that of the MSA are prohibitive for a
group of amateur builders. Instead we have always gone the non
certificate route and this results in a rather large structure. There is
no doubt it does the job but it is disadvantageous due to its shape and
size when it comes to the aerodynamic side of things. We even made a
mock chassis to check that the manufacturing process was within or
skills. Sadly we decided that it was not worth the effort to go ahead
with the project.
A snapshot of the chassis showing the ROPS that caused us all the
hassle.
and a CFD,
(computational fluid dynamics) snapshot showing how it destroys the airflow at the rear of the car. On
returning from Estoril Graham had a message asking " is this one of
yours" It was an advert for a hillclimb /sprint car on that well known
website. It was looking rather tired but it was indeed one of ours. It
was a FF2000 car the team had built way back in 1986 for the BBC
grandstand Winter series. That little car has been about over the years
and in our care gave lots of folk a lot of fun. It was sold to pay for
Grahams wedding, a great investment as it turned out, and has had a
couple of owners before becoming lost to us around 1994.
How
amazing is it that it pops up 31 years after we built it. Also amazing
is how the ROPS sticks out like a sore thumb and confirms how
problematic the rule book suggestions are. Like nearly all the FF
Rotors we made it has been converted, not by us I may add, to take a
bike engine. There are now three Rotor single seaters out there with
bike engines and two sportscars.
JT4 bike engine .
JT9 taking shape.
Bodywork fits. Looks big until you realise the man in the picture is only half the man he used to be.
Still lots to do so I suspect it will be 2018 before it is out on the hills. Big Smiles
Very slow in the workshop at the moment. Lots of distractions to keep the boys occupied elsewhere. One
of the biggest was going racing again. A trip to Barcelona for Graham
to help out an ex driver seemed to have all the wrong effects. After
watching a new Norma LMP3 car getting finished in the pit next to him
